-: My name is Chris Foca, I am the director
of procurement and contract management
for the Virginia Medicaid system.
So, we procure services,
mostly to run the program in terms of auditing services,
accounting services, actuarial type of services,
we also procure health systems,
so we actually are right now in the midst of
redesigning the Medicaid system and moving from
fee for service to managed care,
and so we are engaging in contracts
with managed care organizations
for the actual provision of services.
We also are actually buying a managed Medicaid system,
so we're buying a brand new IT system
that will take all of the information that we get
and be able to do some data analysis and work.
So, obviously, there's an idea of what you need
to buy something, and there's a lot of research
that goes into what the design specifications would be,
what the requirements of the system would be,
and then you go and develop through lots of research,
what's called a request for proposal,
you write that over a series of months
and have it reviewed by lots of different persons.
Proposals are received, we do an evaluation
of those proposals, and start then negotiating
with the firms that we feel are best suited
to provide the services, the IT system, something like that.
Move forward a little bit and you're into kind of
the contract award and actually execution.
And so, the life cycle of an RFP or of a procurement
is usually a couple of years from the moment
you think, okay, I need to buy something
or I need to procure a new software system,
to the actual awarding of a contract
and performance to begin.
It's different than when I worked in a for profit business
where Saturdays and Sundays were routine
and phone calls at 11 o'clock on a Sunday
became the norm.
State government, it runs a little different.
There's not the expectation that you'll do that
and there's still the expectation
that you will get the job done.
So the great thing is I have a wonderful team
that I work with, and so throughout
and amongst the team we're able keep up with it.